Captain Marvel (Earth-199999)

Captain Marvel, born Carol Danvers and formerly known as Vers, is an American hero, former United States Air Force pilot, and former member of the Kree Starforce. Due to being exposed to a burst of energy from a lightspeed engine developed by Mar-Vell, powered by the Tesseract, Danvers possesses the ability to harness that energy to colossally powerful effect. Besides weaponizing the energy from the Space Stone, Danvers can use it to make herself practically invincible and fly at incredibly high speeds, even through space. These and other powers make her one of the most powerful beings in the universe.

Biography

Early life and Kree abduction

Carol Danvers enlisted in the United States Air Force as a young woman, routinely dealing with misogyny and detractors along the way. She became friends with Dr. Wendy Lawson, a brilliant engineer who designed jets for the USAF, as well as fellow pilot Maria Rambeau. During her time in the military, she was nicknamed "Avenger." In 1989, before the Air Force allowed women to fly fighter jets, Lawson planned an unauthorized test flight using a special engine she had developed—secretly, a lightspeed engine. Danvers volunteered to fly it herself, and the two took the jet up together. They were fired upon by a Kree spaceship, and attempted to fly to Lawson's secret laboratory in orbit, but were forced to crash land far from civilization. Both survived, and Lawson explained that she was actually a rogue Kree scientist named Mar-Vell trying to end a massive, galactic war. She now needed to destroy the engine to keep it from falling into Kree hands. Mar-Vell was shot and killed by the Kree Yon-Rogg, and Danvers shot and destroyed the engine herself, causing a fantastic energy burst that caused her to absorb much of its power. The blast knocked her unconscious, and she was taken by Yon-Rogg and the Kree. Her dogtag was blown in half by the blast: Yon-Rogg found the latter half of it, and identified her as "Vers." Her memories were suppressed and she was integrated into Kree society on the planet Hala as a member of the Starforce, with Yon-Rogg as her mentor. She was transfused with Yon-Rogg's blue Kree blood and installed with a suppressor on her neck that kept her from utilizing the powers of the engine to their fullest extent.

Kree-Skrull War

While living on Hala among the Kree, Vers was trained by Yon-Rogg to fight for the Kree Starforce in their long-ongoing war with the Skrulls. Yon-Rogg claimed that her powers were a gift from the Kree, and trained her to suppress it. He claimed that she should "control it" in a supposed effort to keep her from relying on it overmuch. In 1995, Vers became tormented by vague visions of her past as she slept. She communed with the Supreme Intelligence, who took the form of Mar-Vell, though Vers didn't recognize her. The Intelligence encouraged her to focus her strife toward the war effort. Vers and a small Starforce group led by Yon-Rogg went on a mission to rescue spy Soh-Larr from Torfa, a planet recently invaded by the Skrulls. Soh-Larr had been gathering intel on the Skrulls, but his attempt to send the information back to Hala was intercepted, and Skrull forces led by Talos were closing in on his position. The mission was a failure: the Skrulls used their shapeshifting abilities to take the Kree by surprise, overwhelming their forces. Vers herself was fooled by a Talos imitating Soh-Larr, who knocked her out and took her captive as the rest of the team fled and escaped the planet. Talos and Skrull scientist Norex probed her memories in search of Dr. Lawson, whom they believed to have developed a lightspeed engine. They were able to conclude that Lawson lived on Earth, otherwise known as planet C-53, and declared their intentions to do whatever it took to find her there. Vers fought out of her bonds and through various Skrull forces, taking an escape pod and crash-landing on Earth: specifically, Los Angeles, California in the United States.

She used the comms equipment in her suit to reverse-engineer a payphone in a strip mall and contact Yon-Rogg, and was briefly able to tell him the situation. Yon-Rogg tried to convince her to stay put and not do anything, as he and the others would be able to reach Earth in 22 hours. Vers was soon confronted by police along with Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, agents from S.H.I.E.L.D. Vers unabashedly spoke the truth, telling the bemused agents of the Kree-Skrull situation and the pending Skrull invasion of Earth. She was suddenly fired upon by what was clearly a Skrull disguised as a human: the shot missed, and Vers gave chase on foot while Fury and Coulson urgently followed by car. She lost the Skrull, but was able to claim a small storage device that showed her footage from her memories. She traced these memories to a bar, which continued to jostle her memory when she arrived. She was again confronted by Nick Fury, whose partner Coulson had been imitated by another Skrull who tried to kill him during the chase. Vers inquired as to the nature and whereabouts of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., which she had started to uncover from her memories, as well as Dr. Lawson's connection to it. The two arrived at an underground facility in the desert using Fury's clearance and inquired with the security there about Dr. Lawson. They were detained in a security room, but were able to escape through Fury's spy expertise. They made their way to a vast records room, and found that Lawson's lightspeed project had been terminated by S.H.I.E.L.D. Furthermore, they learned that she was a Kree, and that she'd died in 1989 following an unauthorized test flight: pilot Maria Rambeau was said to be the last person to see her alive. Vers also found a photo of herself with Rambeau and Lawson, proving that she had been on Earth in the past.

As Fury went off to himself, Vers contacted Yon-Rogg and demanded answers about Lawson. He told her that she was a Kree operative, and her true name was Mar-Vell. Vers told him that she'd apparently had a life on Earth, but he warned her that it was the Skrulls' influence on her mind and to not let her emotions get out of hand. Before long, Talos imitating S.H.I.E.L.D. director Keller and several other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived at the base. Fury had secretly paged for backup, not realizing that Keller was a Skrull. Vers and Fury escaped, passing by Phil Coulson on the way. Coulson let them go, apparently realizing that something was wrong with the situation. Vers tapped into her fighter-pilot experience, flying an experimental aircraft out of the base's hanger—a cat named Goose also stowed aboard, much to Fury's delight. The two flew to Louisiana to find Maria Rambeau: they found her and her daughter Monica living there, and explained the situation. Maria had been Vers' best friend when she lived on Earth as Carol Danvers. Danvers had been the one to fly in Lawson's unauthorized test flight, and according to record had died in the crash. Later that day, Talos and Norex visited Rambeau's home under peaceful pretenses. Talos possessed the black box from Danvers's crash, which the government had claimed was destroyed. Talos was also terrified of Goose, which he claimed was a dangerous Flerken. The audio recording in the black box sparked Danvers's memory of the events surrounding the crash, including her abduction by the Kree.

The revelation shocked Danvers to her core. Talos explained that the Skrulls were galactic refugees after having refused Kree rule of their home planet, and that finalizing Mar-Vell's research into a lightspeed engine was the only hope in saving his race and escaping the Kree for good. The group determined that studying the coordinates in Mar-Vell's jet from Danvers's memories would allow them to locate Mar-Vell's lab in orbit, where they would find the core. Danvers, Fury, Talos, and a hesitant Maria Rambeau (along with Goose) teamed to fly to the lab, while Norex stayed behind to imitate Danvers and throw Yon-Rogg off their trail. Danvers commemorated her detachment from Kree society by changing the colors on her Starforce uniform to red, blue, and gold—matching the USAF insignia—creating what would be her signature gear for years to come. Norex modified the craft that Danvers had stolen from the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. base to allow for the space travel required. In orbit, Danvers used her Kree gear to decloak Mar-Vell's laboratory, which revealed itself to be a colossal Kree imperial cruiser. They quickly found the core, a glowing blue cube called the Tesseract, and stored it in a lunchbox from Mar-Vell's desk. There was also a large holdout of Skrulls, including Talos' wife Soren and their child. Mar-Vell had kept them safe there, warning them not to send any signals or they'd be found by the Kree. They were soon ambushed by a Starforce platoon led by Yon-Rogg, who took advantage of the suppressor on Danvers's neck to leave her effectively defenseless, easily claiming the Tesseract. The Kree forced Danvers to commune with the Supreme Intelligence, took Goose captive, and prepared to jettison the humans and Skrulls into space. As she communed, Danvers unleashed the energy deep inside her, destroying the suppressor and realizing her potential. Effectively, she was filled with the power of an Infinity Stone.

Glowing with pure energy, Danvers ran through any Kree forces who opposed her, becoming utterly unstoppable. The amount of energy involved sent an electromagnetic disturbance throughout the lab, causing the Kree's technology to malfunction and freeing their captives. She claimed the Tesseract and tried to hand it off to Fury, but he was hesitant to hold it. Goose revealed its true nature, consuming the Tesseract with humongous tentacles sprouting from its feline mouth. Danvers told Fury to escape with the others while she took the lunchbox and confronted the Starforce platoon as a diversion. Fury and the others were able to escape, but Minn-Erva and Yon-Rogg each pursued them in smaller craft. Danvers grabbed hold of Yon-Rogg's craft, trailing it into Earth's atmosphere, while Rambeau shot down Minn-Erva. Yon-Rogg shook Danvers off and she plummeted to the ground, but dug even deeper inside herself and realized she could fly. She fired upon Yon-Rogg's ship and forced him to crash land. Meanwhile, a fleet led by Ronan the Accuser arrived in orbit and fired several ballistic warheads at the planet, determined to wipe out any and all Skrulls at any cost. Danvers demonstrated her catastrophic power by grabbing one of the warheads mid-flight and using it to destroy the others. She flew into space and obliterated the fleet's defenses, flying straight through one of the ships and destroying it from the inside in moments. Realizing what they were up against, Ronan ordered a retreat. Danvers returned to Earth and confronted Yon-Rogg, who challenged her to fight him without her new powers. Uninterested, Danvers blasted him in the chest and returned him to his craft, sending him back to Hala to inform the Supreme Intelligence that she was coming to end, "the war, the lies, all of it." Later, with the humans and Skrulls safe, Danvers agreed to find the displaced Skrulls a new home elsewhere in the universe. She asked Fury to keep the Tesseract safe on Earth, and modified his pager to allow intergalactic contact. She told him to use it to contact her only in the case of an emergency. She bid farewell to Fury and the Rambeaus, and led the Skrulls off to their new home.

Infinity War

Danvers spent the next 23 years solving various problems throughout the universe, until she received a message from Fury's pager in 2018. The message had come moments after Thanos's Snap, in which he assembled the Infinity Stones and killed half of all life in the universe. Fury and trillions of other living things had been turned to dust by the Snap. Danvers made haste to the location of the pager, the headquarters of the surviving Avengers, who brought her up to speed on the situation and effectively made her a member of the team. They were still missing several heroes who had fought Thanos in person on Titan, and Danvers was sent to retrieve any survivors. She found Iron Man and Nebula on the Benatar, floating aimlessly through space and essentially waiting for death. She brought them home, and she and the other Avengers—minus a malnourished Iron Man—planned a counterassault against Thanos. They detected a second usage of the Infinity Stones on Titan II, and flew the Benatar there to kill him and retrieve the Stones at any cost. They were surprised to find that Thanos was completely undefended, living peacefully on a farm. They organized a perfect ambush, assaulting him in his home and chopping off his left arm with the Infinity Gauntlet. The Stones weren't there, however: Thanos claimed that he had used the Stones to destroy them and ensure that no one could reverse what he had done. His adopted, estranged daughter Nebula corroborated that he wouldn't lie. Thor took his axe Stormbreaker to Thanos's head, decapitating and killing him. With seemingly no solution left to saving those Thanos had killed, the Avengers devoted themselves to helping the countless people left alive, traumatized and grieving. Danvers in particular traveled through the universe helping the countless civilizations that had been shaken by the Snap, maintaining contact with the Avengers as she did.

In 2023, as Danvers continued to patrol the universe, the chance return of Scott Lang from the Quantum Realm allowed the Avengers to commit what they called the Time Heist: a time-traveling effort to claim the Infinity Stones from various times and places in the past (creating several alternate universes in the process), returning them to the present, and reviving all those killed by the Snap. The Heist was a success, and the Hulk snapped trillions of lives back into existence. Unfortunately, during the Time Heist, Nebula's presence was compromised and alerted the 2014 version of Thanos, allowing him and his fleet to travel to 2023 and assault Avengers headquarters. Virtually every known hero in existence, including Danvers and those who had just been revived, arrived to fight Thanos's forces. Thanos gathered what his 2018 self had done and the ensuing results, and realized that killing half of all life wasn't enough to purify the universe. He declared his intentions to wipe the entire universe from existence and start another, and put his army's full efforts into retrieving the loaded Infinity Gauntlet. Eventually, Iron Man gained control of the Stones and installed them into a custom-made gauntlet on his suit. With the intense power of the Stones certain to kill him, Iron Man sacrificed his life to snap Thanos and his army to dust, defeating the Mad Titan once and for all. Captain Marvel attended Iron Man's funeral, and returned to traveling the universe and helping those in need. Over the next year, Danvers came to be publicly known as Captain Marvel.